The northern species above referred to are 34 in number, and include Dacridium vitreum, Nucula pumila, Leda lucida, L. frigida, Verticordia abyssicola, Neæra jugosa, N. obesa, Tectura fulva, Fissurisepta papillosa, Torellia vestita, Pleurotoma turricula, Admete viridula, Cylichna alba, Cylichna ovata, JEFFREYS n. sp., Bulla conulus, S. WOOD not DESHAYES (Coralline Crag), and Scaphander librarius. Leda lucida, Neæra jugosa, Tectura fulva, Fissurisepta papillosa, Torellia vestita, as well as several other known species in this dredging, are also fossil in Sicily. Nearly all these shells, as well as a few small echinoderms, corals, and other organisms, had evidently been transported by some current to the spot where they were found; and they must have formed a thick deposit similar to those of which many tertiary fossiliferous strata are composed. It seemed probable also that the deposit was partly caused by tidal action, because a fragment of Melampus myosotis (a littoral pulmonibranch) was mixed with deep-water and oceanic Pectinibranchiates and Lamellibranchiates. None of the shells were Miocene or of an older period.

"This remarkable collection, of which not much more than one-half is known to conchologists, notwithstanding their assiduous labours, teaches us how much remains to be done before we can assume that the record of Marine Zoology is complete. Let us compare the vast expanse of the sea-bed in the North Atlantic with that small fringe of the coast on both sides of it which has yet been partially explored, and consider with reference to the dredging last mentioned what are the prospects of our ever becoming acquainted with all the inhabitants of the deep

throughout the globe! We believe, however, that a thorough examination of the newer Tertiaries would materially assist us in the inquiry; and such examination is feasible and comparatively easy. Much good work has been done in this line; but although the researches of Brocchi, Bivona, Cantraine, Philippi, Calcara, Costa, Aradas, Brugnone, Seguenza, and other able paleontologists in the south of Italy have extended over more than half a century, and are still energetically prosecuted, many species of molluscous shells are continually being discovered there, and have never been published. Besides the Mollusca in this dredging from 994 fathoms, Professor Duncan informs us that there are two new genera of corals, and Flabellum distinctum, which last he regards as identical with one from North Japan. It coincides with the discovery on the Lusitanian coasts of two Japanese species of a curious genus of Mollusca, Verticordia, both of which are fossil in Sicily and one of them in the Coralline Crag of Suffolk."

In the same dredging there are a number of very singular undescribed sponges, many of them recalling some of the most marked characters of one of the sections of Ventriculates. These will be referred to in a future chapter.

On Thursday, the 21st of July, dredging was carried on all day at depths from 600 to 1095 fathoms, lat. 39° 42′ N., long. 9° 43′ W., with a bottom temperature at 1095 fathoms of 4°3 C. and at 740 fathoms of 9°4 C. The dredging was most successful; many of the new and peculiar mollusca of the last dredging were taken here alive, with several additional forms.

Several undescribed crustaceans were added;-a new species of the genus Conocyathus among the corals, and a species of an unknown genus allied to Bathycyathus. Brisinga endecacnemos and some new ophiurids were part of the treasures, but the greatest prize was a splendid Pentacrinus about a foot long, of which several specimens came up attached to the tangles. This northern Sea-lily, on which my friend Mr. Gwyn Jeffreys has bestowed the name Pentacrinus wyville-thomsoni, will be described hereafter with some other equally interesting members of the same group.

Cape Espichel was reached on the 25th. The weather was now, however, so rough that Captain Calver was obliged to take shelter in Setubal Bay. Professor Barboza de Bocage of Lisbon had given Mr. Gwyn Jeffreys a letter of introduction to the coastguard officer at Setubal, who knew the place where the deep-sea shark and the Hyalonema are taken by the fishermen, but the state of the weather prevented his taking advantage of it.

Off Cape Espichel in 740 and 718 fathoms, with a temperature of 10°2 C., the mollusca were much the same as those from Station 16, but included Leda pusio, Limopsis pygmæa (Sicilian fossils), and Verticordia acuticostata. The last-named species is interesting in a geological as well as a geographical point of view. It is fossil in the Coralline Crag and the Sicilian Pliocene beds, and it now lives in the Japanese archipelago. Mr. Jeffreys suggests a mode of accounting for the community of so many species to the eastern borders of the Atlantic basin and the Mediterranean, in which several Japanese brachiopods and crustaceans are found, and the seas of

Northern Asia, by supposing a migration through

FIG. 36.-Chondrocladia virgata, WYVILLE THOMSON. One-half the natural size. (No. 33, Pl. V.)

the Arctic Sea. We must know, however, much

more than we yet do of the extension both in time and space of the fauna of deep water before we can come to any certain conclusion on these questions.

Dredging across the entrance of the Strait of Gibraltar in 477, 651, and 554 fathoms, Stations 31, 32, and 33, with a bottom temperature of 10°3, 10°1, and 10 ̊0 respectively, many remarkable forms were dredged, including a very elegant sponge, apparently allied to, if not identical with, Oscar Schmidt's, Caminus vulcani, and some beautiful forms of the Corallio-spongiæ, which will be noticed in a future chapter. Station No. 31 yielded a sponge form which recalled the branching heather-like Cladorhiza of the cold area off Froe. Chondrocladia virgata (Fig. 36) is a graceful branching organism from twenty to forty centimetres in height. A branching root of a cartilaginous consistence, formed of densely packed sheaves of needle-shaped spicules bound together by a structureless organic cement, attaches the sponge to some foreign body, and supports it in an upright position; and the same structure is continued as a solid axis into the main stem and the branches. The axis is made up of a set of very definite strands like the strands of a rope, arranged spirally, so as to present at first sight a strong resemblance to the whisp of Hyalonema; but the strands are opaque, and break up under the point of a knife; and under the microscope they are found to consist of minute needle-like spicules closely felted together. The soft sponge substance spreads over the surface of the axis and rises into long curving conical processes, towards the end of which there is a dark greenish oval mass of granular sponge matter, and the outline of the